Chapter Two #2
Every line and muscle tightens with the request. His breath rushes out in a harsh huff that burns the naked skin of my shoulder. The bulge nestled flush against my mound twitches, and I have to resist the urge to push down on it.
“If it is what you need,” he murmurs, fingers tight fists creasing my nightgown.
I swallow my shame, shed the lingering remains of my morals and doubts and kiss him. I taste the surprise off his tongue. Savor the low moan working up his throat. I hold him to me and pour myself into this need I’ve had for much too long.
It’s simple, telling myself not to enjoy it, to not take the tiniest hint of comfort from the solid weight, the warmth of his hold.
It’s been a week since I lost the ground beneath my feet.
A week of wandering the endless corridors of Usher House, searching for something I know isn’t there.
It’s been a week where I can’t even look at my bedroom door without the tiny flare of hope that maybe, just maybe I’ll step inside and they’ll be there, reclined across my mattress.
Their powerful bodies taking up nearly every inch, except a tiny sliver of space meant for me.
They grew overnight.
They went from thin and gangly to six feet with muscles and big, capable hands — their father’s hands.
I remember the years I spent between them after their mother died.
Back against the headboard, reading to them well into the night until they were both fast asleep.
There had been so much room in that bed back then.
By the time I lost my parents, I couldn’t roll over without elbowing one or kicking the other.
Now, the mattress is an ocean of loss, and I drown in all its folds. There are years from the center to the edge. Miles of cold, barren nothing spanning to the shadows like the end of the world.
“Que fais-tu, Linny?”
The tears had started again. Silent, hot knives cutting down worn cheeks. The burn itches, but I can’t release him. But I lift my face. I bump his nose with mine with the gentlest nudge.
“Hold me, Uncle Marcus. A little longer. I just … help me forget. Please.”
His throaty groan vibrates up his chest. It rumbles beneath my skin and settles in that place that makes me ache. My nipples tighten beneath the satin slip of my gown, and I wonder if he can feel the graze of them against him.
I’m not given the chance to ask, to even assess the inferno of desire deep in his eyes when I’m swept up and turned over.
I’m pulled across the cool sheets with him fastened against me.
Big palms with long fingers slide beneath my back, anchor around my hips.
Drawing me … my chest deeper into the curve of his body.
His face nuzzles the side of my neck. Lips graze my pulse.
“How’s this?”
Carefully, I slip my arms around his shoulders. My leg around his hip. I watch in the mirrors as we come together, fitting in all the right places.
“Tighter.”
We stay in that twisted embrace.
We lie in the comfortable silence of a house much too grand, too old for two people.
Beyond the stone walls, the wind claws. It howls and rages against the glass.
I think how often I heard that exact sound while pressed down the length of Ames’s front with Eliah curled around my back, even breaths warm against the nape of my neck.
That last morning, I woke with his mouth over my naked breast while Eliah rubbed lightly at my clit. No one spoke. We barely moved. Even when they brought me over, they held me like they knew it would be our last time.
The knowledge pours fuels through me all over again. A righteous and vengeful surge of heat that momentarily rattles my last shred of sanity.
It can’t end this way.
This can’t be how I let their memories fade.
I stare up into the eyes of the woman clinging helplessly to the solid weight of the man molding her into the mattress. The weight of a man who she knew would move heaven and earth for her. A man who had never been good at keeping his true feelings from his eyes.
Lenora Usher may be naive in many ways. Sheltered and protected from the evils of the world. But she has never been stupid or blind. She was raised to stand at the shoulder of an Usher man or be used as a pawn to form an alliance. It is the way of things.
But it’s always been clear — submission is weakness.
Weakness is shame.
I will not allow my boys to die in shame.
“Uncle Marcus?”
“Oui, mon petit?”
Tentatively, the way one might touch a spooked cat, I brush my fingers through his hair. I watch the gentle glide in the mirror overhead. Watch his shoulders stiffen.
Then relax.
I repeat the stroke.
“If I ask for a favor, will you grant it?”
He doesn’t even pause to consider my request.
“You know I will give you anything—”
I shake my head. “A real favor. The kind you make with the Family.”
His sharp inhale catches across the flex of his back.
“Linny…” His head lifts. “I know what you’re going to ask, but—”
“Please,” I cut in. “I don’t trust anyone else.” Carefully, I let my fingers drift to his face. I cup the stubble lining his jaw. “I’m not afraid.”
His brows furrow over eyes hard with concern. “It’s not about being afraid. It’s about sense. What you’re asking is dangerous.”
“It’s you,” I point out. “You won’t hurt me.”
“Of course I won’t hurt you. That is not the point.”
I skim a kiss to the tip of his nose. Light. Simple. The gesture brings our faces dangerously close. His mouth hovers inches from mine.
“Please, Uncle Marcus. I will never ask anything of you again. Just … give me this one thing.”
His hold is suffocating. A crushing python clamped around my middle. I can scarcely breathe, but I don’t mention it. Can’t when he crashes his mouth to mine.
“What do you want, Linny?” he snarls in between kisses.
Heels dig into the mattress and I arch. I push myself down his length, chasing that familiar rush building at the back of my belly button.
“Kill them.” I break off with a sobbing moan when he pushes my hips flat and rolls in slow, torturous circles. “Kill them for me, Uncle Marcus. All of them. The men. The women. Erase their entire line. Their name.”
His groan is the sound of a wild animal. The vicious roar of a beast tearing into the throat of his prey. And I’m his prey. His willing victim.
“A favor requires payment.”
Against my mound, his bulge rocks. It grinds with the faintest jerk, but I feel it to my toes. It tightens my fingers in his hair.
“Anything.” Our lips bump with the promise. “Anything you want.”
His growl is a low rumble deep in his chest. It’s followed by the deliberate shift, the roll that steals a gasp from me that he swallows with his lips. With his tongue sweeping over mine. He takes my mouth with a heated urgency of someone terrified it might be snatched away from him.
Between us, his body snaps against mine. His cock burns through his sleeping trousers and my panties. It’s a thick wedge of pulsing meat pushing against me with the most perfect drives. Each one has my hips chasing him, meeting and matching every assault.
The hand on my hips drifts inward. Ghosts across my pelvis to shove beneath my panties. I feel the level of my own arousal with the first dip of his fingers through my folds.
“Fuck…” he hisses. “You’re so wet.”
The boys never went past the first knuckle when touching my opening. It knocks the wind out of me when Marcus plunges a full finger in.
His head snaps up. Eyes wide.
“Did I hurt you?”
I try to shake my head, but the sting brings tears to my eyes.
He notices and immediately withdraws.
“Jesus, you’re a virgin?” He props himself up on an elbow to peer into my face. “I thought…”
Heat blooms beneath my cheeks. “No,” I answer his unasked question.
I think he’s going to stop, but his hand is splayed over my mound still. One finger lightly rubbing my clit. He doesn’t move. Continues to flick until my muscles relax and I open wider.
“You should have told me,” he mutters.
We couldn’t.
I couldn’t. We tried but the discomfort was always too overwhelming.
Neither of them wanted to be the one to hurt me so the task stayed undone.
It never seemed important in the beginning.
We knew we would eventually one day and never saw the need to rush it.
Not that they didn’t enjoy doing other things to my body.
Holding me down and taking turns forcing me to take their head and cumming in me was one of their favorite games.
But never the full thing. That was the rule.
It was only recently they suggested we bring Uncle Marcus in to help. He was supposed to show us how.
I can’t help wondering if maybe the universe knew I would need that slip of skin for a much bigger purpose.
“It’s yours if you’ll grant me this favor,” I whisper instead.
His expression never changes. He searches my face while skimming a circle around my bundle of nerves.
“Your pussy for their lives?” he clarifies with a husky drawl that makes my cheeks prickle.
I shake my head. “I want to watch you hurt them, Uncle Marcus.”